Bayside Chroniclehttps://baysidechronicle.com
@DathBrun's musings, thoughts and perspectives on Technology, Project Managment Practice, Water Safety, parenthood, SCUBA Diving, music and pretty much everything involving life and Community. I spend a lot of time by the Bay.
Thu, 20 Dec 2018 10:40:20 +0000 en
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Cohesity demonstrate a definitive compliance policy for GDPR at VMWorldhttps://baysidechronicle.com/2018/11/07/cohesity-demonstrate-a-definitive-compliance-policy-for-gdpr-at-vmworld/
https://baysidechronicle.com/2018/11/07/cohesity-demonstrate-a-definitive-compliance-policy-for-gdpr-at-vmworld/#commentsWed, 07 Nov 2018 13:46:09 +0000http://baysidechronicle.com/?p=1274The blog post from VMWorld , where I am really excited about how Cohesity have written the playbook for GDPR compliance in the Data Centre and the Cloud, and I don’t think they realise it.

Full disclosure up front. I was invited to a vRetreat blogger briefing on Cohesitiy. I am not a paid blogger and I have not been paid or promised any gratuity. (But I did get delicious pastries and nice coffee at the venue in Barcelona, including a glass of Cava). I was attending this briefing out of interest in Cohesity, which is a not so new player in secondary storage. Beyond the invite and being in Barcelona for VMWorld 2018, I wasn’t expecting to be excited by a company’s strategy that genuinely addresses GDPR as a policy and practice.

The purpose of the briefing was to allow Cohesity’s Field CTO ,Rawlinson Rivera, give an Overview of Cohesity’s technology and their vision of the future, based on their announcements at VMWorld.

I have to hand it to Rawlinson Rivera, his delivery was very “Hollywood”. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, rather it was delivered with style and substance.

Now other technical bloggers will likely address the “How” for the technology that Cohesity offers. My perspective is a more strategic one about the “Why”.

But before I get ahead of myself, let me set the stage that Rawlinson Rivera did in terms of defining the problem.

From Cohesity’s perspective, they are pointing out that secondary infrastructure tasks, backups, test dev, archiving, and analytics are prone to inefficiencies. I don’t think anyone can refute that. Indeed these are complex tasks and are pre-destined to becoming “wicked” problems. A wicked problem as wikipedia describes it is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognise. The use of the term “wicked” here has come to denote resistance to resolution, rather than evil. The cloud has obviously inherited this complexity from the Data centre.

Cohesity offer their solution to this problem by converging your secondary data on a single cloud-ready solution, “Cohesity Data Platform”.

This solution offers plenty to talk about, including web scale distributed file system, accelerated application development and in-depth data insight. But what captured my attention was the differentiators that Cohesity offer as highlighted by Rivera. In particular the data reduction differentiator, as it started me thinking about GDPR in the Data Centre and the cloud.

Just to clarify, GDPR is European Data protection legislation. For the sake of consistency, I’ll share the definition that Cohesity uses to describe GDPR:

“The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) harmonises data privacy laws across the European Union (EU). In effect May 25, 2018, it has been called the “most important change in data privacy regulation in 20 years” because it gives EU citizens new rights over their personally identifiable information (PII)—from knowing how long companies retain it to demanding it be deleted. Organisations worldwide that have EU residents’ personal data are subject to the regulation, underscoring the importance of a modern framework for data processing. Cohesity’s unified, web-scale secondary data solution consolidates PII and streamlines compliance with the subset of GDPR requirements related to data protection and data management, helping to mitigate both technical measure and key provision non-compliance fines which can be up to 2% (or €10M) or 4% (or €20M) of global annual revenue for each incident, respectively. Enterprise data, including PII, is stored in silos both on-premises and in clouds where fragmentation, lack of visibility, and legacy products make it difficult to discover and search. Poor protection and limited data access and reporting is unacceptable under the GDPR. To comply with GDPR, companies must know exactly what PII they have, where it is stored, how long it has been stored, and whether it has been breached. Furthermore, they must be able to comply with individual citizen requests for modification and deletion.” Source: https://www.cohesity.com/resource-assets/solution-brief/Cohesity_GDPR-Solution-Brief.pdf

When we look at the problem the Data Center and Cloud has, it’s really difficult for organisations to reach compliance with this legislation. And the penalties are severe. However as the rest of the article source points out, Cohesity’s software offers positive benefits that assist in reaching the compliance.

But I think Cohesity may not realise that they potentially have written the standard for achieving GDPR compliance in the Data Center and the Cloud. Or at the very least set the standard for themselves that others could follow. I particularly liked the data reduction differentiator that was called out for it’s platform. Because a really good GDPR compliant strategy in my opinion is Data Reduction. And I admire how Cohesity does this.

These advantages that Cohesity point out, look to me like a sound GDPR compliance policy for the Data Centre and the Cloud that all data professionals ought to follow. One worth implementing and ensuring Data Professionals need not lose sleep over or the 4% penalty. And I’d encourage Cohesity to capitalise on highlighting this far more.

I would contend there is not enough discussion about GDPR in the Secondary Infrastructure space. Everybody seems to be waiting for someone else to breach the regulation and learn from that. I don’t particularly think that’s a good strategy waiting for a disaster like that. Instead perhaps mitigating the risk of a breach of regulations and having policies that build in compliance to your Data Centre and Cloud Services is more appropriate.

I welcome comments on my perspective on this. Does Cohesity offer enough, or too much compliance? Would you agree that Cohesity seems to be setting a standard, or is this a common standard already across Data Professionals addressing GDPR?

Feel free to keep this discussion going. I would love to hear peoples thoughts.

So this weekend I’m in Barcelona for a brief attendance of VMWorld. At the same time I’m here, I am launching my own business, Amoeba Connections and stepping into an entrepreneurial role. And where better to do that with than the VMWorld family.

Even though my company, focuses on e-commerce activities, the diversity of the VMWorld community led to conversations with people that were insightful and revealing and extremely helpful to me. I didn’t expect people to be interested in email marketing, or commercial products given their in the Enterprise space. But of course that was a silly assumption on my part. Fred Nix told me years ago that VMWorld was like nothing else in connecting with people. This remains true to this day. This is not a Conference, its a family reunion.

And while I’m not working in the Enterprise space anymore, I’m still part and parcel of that community. And as it happens I’ll be posting some thoughts following a Blogger briefing by Cohesity shortly.

I have to leave too soon, but thats the life of an entrepreneur. If you’re attending VMWorld and around The conference and events and want to catch up, ping me on twitter @dathbrun.

And thanks to him I have paused from things I am doing and decided to finally climb back into my blog and explain my absence and how I myself am moving past failure.

Failure as Lugi pointed out is most certainly an an option and this post explains how I have failed and how I’m moving past it, albeit rather slowly from my perspective. I’ll also state that I’m absolutely delighted I failed and faltered and the oppurtunity it gave me.

Where have I been?

On the 30th March I concluded my 13 years and almost 4 months with EMC now being Dell EMC. I accepted a redundancy offer. As you may glean from my previous posts I had just gone through a change of roles 5 months previously. And that was from a position I was made redundant from in Dell EMC. I figured I’d take the hint and accept the second offer. So since then I have been pretty independent, looking around for my next oppurtunity, spending quality time with my family and improving my health. But I’ll explain all that in a bit.

Accepting the failure and the faltering

I’m not going to lie, the redundancy, the leaving a company and a “family” was pretty hard hitting. And the old ego took a bruising. But in fairness to Dell EMC, they really looked after me and many others who left and I l really look back on my career over the 13 years with EMC and briefly with Dell EMC with immense gratitude. It was also time for me to move on anyway, given that Dell EMC is essentially a new company, and vastly different from the EMC I “grew up with”. It was also an oppurtunity for me to take stock of myself and reflect. And that was very valuable. Still, I have to admit for a good number of months beyond a few of my close friends and family I did not want to share my news. It took me a long time to realise, despite countless times those close to me told me, that it wasn’t my fault. This was hard for me to accept for a long time. As far as I was concerned I was a failure. I should have seen it coming . I should have prepared better. But in the end, and pretty recently, through the help and patience of family and close friends, I realised, while I did not per se do anything wrong, it felt like a failure and a faltering. And it was okay to feel that way. And it was also okay to look around and see the oppurtunity.

Moving on and letting go

This past Summer, was glorious. The weather was fantastic, hell we even experienced a drought in Ireland, But I for one welcomed it. And being off work meant I could spend so much quality time with my kids. And it worked out well that way, it was a welcome distraction from my melancholy. I got to be Mr. Mom. My wife could work, knowing I could prioritise the kids. we had a great vacation, and a great return from vacation. The family BBQ was never put to task so much in any summer previous to this. The weather was incredible. I got rare quality time with my kids I never had. Usually during the summer I was caught up in International Travel and travails on the “Conference Silly Season” somewhere between Las Vegas and Barcelona. And my wife no longer had to use up her vacation days covering my absence on work travel . I got to focus on my kids, spend time at home, painting rooms, And even finally clearing out my home office to now look more like a home office And I’m currently building up the will power to clear out the garage and tend to the gutters before mid October swings by.

With time comes perspective and new habits:

The time off made me realise what I had been missing with my family while I was caught up in my career. And heck, I even sorted my health out. My “Dad Bod” has been given it’s eviction notice. I have lost 15 pounds, I attend the gym 4 days a week, and get this…. I’m weight lifting. I’ve never done it before. Now I’m not going full “Arnie”, but I am getting fit. And it feels great. I feel a tiny bit younger, and a fair bit stronger, and I can run after the kids now and without feeling like I’m going to keel over. I’ve also let go of my melancholy over leaving EMC / Dell EMC. I guess after 13 years, you do need to grieve. But I’ve moved on. And I’m actually happy it happened. I’m healthier for it, I’m around for my family. And its given me a perspective and understanding of how wrapped up I got with my work. That’s not to say I did not of do not value my career. I do, and I have further ambitions. And I am going to achieve them, just not at the expense of my family.

What’s next?

Well, since it’s now September the kids are back at school. I have been looking for a new role and am ready to get back to work. Not only that but I have been doing a lot of studying too, on analytics, e-commerce, and a bit of research on GDPR that I need to write up. When I do, and it will be a blog post, you can expect it to be rather controversial. It’s a mess IMHO, but more on that in another post.

I will also have a post on the whole experience I’ve had over the last six months with recruiters and recruiting managers. It’ll be constructive criticism.

I’m also working on website development with WordPress and Woo-commerce. I’ll be porting my blog over to a new fully hosted site, rather than just being on WordPress. This will be a fair bit of time in development. I”m still mulling things over, as well as doing a few interviews and researching. I know the right gig will come along. When it does, it will be one that fits my paradigm of career development, bringing value, balanced with family life and definitely not all consuming. My future is uncertain, and that’s okay.

Echoing Nerd’s Blurt:

As Luigi stated failure is an option. It’s always available . It’s right beside success. And certainly the way in which we respond to the failure or faltering is what matters. All I’ll tell you is, if and when it happens to you, breathe, and know it’s going to be okay.

Shameless self promotion:

As stated I am looking for a new role. I have 13 years in a blue chip company under my belt, an MSc in Data Business & Design Research, a track record in community building, program and project management, with revenue generation in the multimillions. I have a swiss army knife of a career with Customer Support, IT, Marketing and Sales experience. My CV is available on request and you can find me on LinkedIn .

]]>https://baysidechronicle.com/2018/09/20/where-have-i-been/feed/3Where have you beenmabroirlPutting Community at the Heart of your value propositonhttps://baysidechronicle.com/2018/02/08/putting-community-at-the-heart-of-your-value-propositon/
https://baysidechronicle.com/2018/02/08/putting-community-at-the-heart-of-your-value-propositon/#respondThu, 08 Feb 2018 12:30:34 +0000http://baysidechronicle.com/?p=1234

As someone who transitioned from a Marketing Customer facing role to an Operation Sales Role and over a decade of Community Management under my belt, I am beset with a new challenge.

My Team is the Enterprise Analytics Group (EAG) that supports Sales operations. Its a really cool space to be in, because the Sales Org is your community, you see the Revenue reports, learn what white space means in Sales terms, as well as pipeline and margin. It’s a frenetic environment. In my area I look after the EMEA Sales community delivering reports, working with reps, Project Managers and Executives to build new reports with decision science tools and Big Data to help Sales predict, anticipate and to overall improve the opportunities for Sales people. Analytics is a cutting edge place to be. I work with Analysts and Data Scientists, and we utilize a very cool Data Lake where we explore investigate and design based on the needs of our Sales community.

I have probably over described what we do, but not many people outside of our org know what we do or the value we create. With me being the “noob” on the team, but with Community Management experience, I play to my strengths and am working to build community as part of that value proposition of the Enterprise Analytics Group. I have learned in my brief time here, that the Sales persona, is somewhat different from the customer persona. They need to know where they need to make next sale, that they are getting their correct commission and all the intel that gives them the pipeline to pursue. And they need it yesterday! And with the complexities of reporting and dashboards, as well as doing the sales job, time is a premium. Its under these circumstances I am working on building our Community which is inside We have a lot of Lurkers but limited engagement. It’s crucial that we change this as the community is a major force as part of the overall value proposition.

As I have also recently graduated University College Cork with an MSc in Data Business with an emphasis on human centred Design Research and Agile Methodology, I’m working with my team of data scientists, analysts and program Managers to look up from the operational onslaught and start to look at what we deliver from a human centred perspective and focus on our value proposition. To me its really important to understand your value proposition to the business no matter where you are in the organisation.

(Aleaxander Osterwalds Business Model Canvas)

As a result of my driving this within our team, we have successfully envisioned an Osterwald Business Model Canvas. We are now developing a Strategyser Value Proposition Canvas to really understand the value proposition and the Customer Segment. We are focusing on understanding our community members needs, the pains, the gains, the job description. By doing this we start to further understand our value proposition and are going to be able to pivot our offerings based on what we understand is required to make the community successful.

This takes time, and patience, a difficult thing on an operations environment. Its not without its challenges, typically status quo bias, cultural and diversity problems, in terms of geographic dispersal of people and roles of the community members. But its still worth doing the research, It’s still worth understanding your users hierarchy of needs and it so important to know, speak about an emphasise your value proposition to the business, and yes that means down to the dollars and cents (or pick your currency) of revenue your piece of the business generates. And Community (like this one here) has to be at the centre of that value proposition.

In any event, that’s my story and thoughts as I get stuck into my new role. if you want to know more about the things I discussed here, please reach out message or comment on this post. I’d love to hear from you and share how I and my team are shaping our community and value proposition.

Okay, this post starts with a bit of dark history. On New Years day 2001, on my way home from a great New Years eve celebration in Luna Park, after watching the Fireworks launch off Sydney Harbour bridge, I was attacked and had my nose broken as well as my collar bone.

It left me with a deviated septum and a literal chip on my shoulder. And suffice to say I never go to public gatherings for New Years. But that was 17 years ago, and I have well moved on from it, just the physical consequences remain.

So that might seem quite a bit of a downer to start with, but I do stand by the title of this post, happy and prosperous. 2017, was a mixed year for a lot of us. A lot has happened, tragic and heinous terrorist acts, in London, Manchester, Miami, Paris and plenty in the middle east. Those are the headliners of course and I am sure personally and professionally we all suffered our own challenges, tragedies and personal losses.

But we also had our triumphs.

My greatest one this year for me was to graduate with my MSc, which has directly helped in keeping me employed, passionate and curious. I survived Christmas, I survived the summer, I still have my wife and 2 kids, the most important people to me. I am lucky and appreciative of the fact that I have a roof over my head I can still afford to pay for and long may it continue. I have so much to be thankful for. And I reflect that due to luck, circumstances and yes even my own professionalism, I made it to another year. More scars added, this time to my heart more grey on the noggin.

It is perfectly true that there is much darkness in this world. A lot of things are rising from the dark that both the political left right and center are terrified of. We all have our bogeymen, politically, personally, financially. But even if 2017 was an awful year for you, you made it to 2018. You did that, possibly with help, but you did it.

2018, no matter where you are starting from, can the year that is the standout for you in the most positive ways. If it’s not been going well for you, this year is going to be so much better. I promise you it will, because you are going to make it happen. You are going to make the happy and prosperous happen for you. And if you have no faith in yourself, that’s fine. I won’t hold it against you if you fake it to make it. And I endorse that strategy, it’s working for me.

2018, is about to be a very different for me. I have a very different job, going from influence marketing to sales analytics. very different spaces and With only just over a month in the role it’s overwhelming. But I love it, I love the steep learning curve, learning new tools and the corporate enterprise sales model. And I’m already making a difference, with some design thinking and Agile methodology I learned during my MSc. I’m loving it.

I’m in a good place, because I’m working off a personal creed that I’m holding to and carrying forward into 2018.

It is simply “Do what is meaningful, not what is expedient”. That is a creed I’m moving forward with and also having a more abundant perception of the world. And what I mean by that is I am going to make myself remember that every challenge holds within it a tremendous opportunity to take advantage of. Maybe that will help you make a resolution, set a goal or work something out for yourself. I hope it does.

And if I can do anything at all to help you achieve that, reach out and let me know.

For now, as we get started with this brand New Year, let me wish each of you that comes to this blog a tremendously happy and prosperous New Year to you and yours. I know I’m going to.

I have been intending to write this for a number of weeks. But procrastination and a busy transition of roles at work knocked that back.

However I had the opportunity to attend an advent spiral ceremony with my son. His class were asked to invite a parent to attend with the child. Advent is a ceremony that while recognized as a Christian ceremony, the spiral aspect occurs in all cultures going back possibly as long as humanity has had consciousness. It’s associated with the cycle of rebirth, time and seasons and the spiritual journey.

It was a good ceremony, a time to spend with my son, and a time to reflect on things and a way to let things go, and a look towards the future. And it was a wonderful ceremony ( well as wonderful as it can be with kids who can get bored quick )

Its been a heavy year, a personally difficult one, as well as professionally. So this ceremony was a good marker at the right time that helped me put things in perspective. For those that don’t know, Due to a corporate re-org, I am no longer running the Dell EMC Elect Program. Instead I have taken up a role with the Dell EMC Design Science and Enterprise Analytics Team. It’s a transition from marketing to a Sales support role. It’s a steep learning curve, with Business objects and tools like Sales Force and Tableau. Which makes it interesting. What’s also interesting is getting to know the sales side of things at Dell EMC and the community of Sales folks. And it involves working with data scientists I admit I’m enjoying it despite feeling out of my depth and comfort zone.

That said it’s been a bitter sweet transition that was preceded the death of a friend, a terrible storm. Its not been easy stepping away from the Dell EMC Elect community, but as I did, I was clearly told by the members of that community that I could never truly leave, that the community was always going to be there. And that means an awful lot.

Having said all that, the advent spiral ceremony, where I walked with my 7 year old son along the spiral as he carried his candle, was the perfect journey of reflection. Once at the centre of the spiral, the candle is lit (by the school principal) and my son carries his candle back through the spiral and places the candle down in the greenery on the way out, adding to other candles that incremented as per the photo above to beautifully light the spiral.

I have to say that helped me mark out the whole transition of this year. And while it’s been tough, its not without its achievements. After all I did graduate with my MSc in September, and reaching my 13th year in Dell EMC. It also helped me finally let go of my friend, Satish Singh. As I was unable to attend his funeral, the advent spiral was a way to say goodbye in my own way. And it helped me let go of the trusteeship of the Dell EMC Elect and accept my new role. I also said good bye to a lot of personal stuff in my life and renew my commitment to improving myself.

2018 is going to be a different year. I’ll not be attending conferences anymore, well at least in the capacity of attending s part of my job. Which I’m actually looking forward to, as in not having to travel. It also means I commute to the office, which is an hour and half each way. While a little inconvenient compared to my previous commute, walking upstairs to my home office, I have taken advantage of listening to podcasts on the drive. And I do enjoy it. Overall, this next year is looking good, very different, but good, challenging, uncertain, overwhelming. All positive things for me. It’s a great challenge and oppurtunity, which I’m already knocking out of the park and will continue to do so in 2018.

And finally, I will wish you dear reader, and all those in my community a very Happy Christmas, and a brilliant healthy and prosperous New Year. I hope you mark of this year in your own way, and get perspective and a way forward. I’ll see you in the New Year, no doubt talking analytics, data science, math (mind you, I’m no mathematician:) ) and tech. Until then enjoy the holidays and see you in the New Year.

And as it is the season, here’s the irish language version of the classic seasonal Silent Night:

And the retelling of my favourite Christmas story, “The Gift of the Magi”

On Monday the 2nd Of October, 2017, Satish Singh, a colleague and friend of mine, passed away in Austin, Texas.

It’s always hard when a co-worker and friend dies . But when they take their own life, it’s a gut wrenching hollowing of your soul. And that is because this permanent solution to the victims temporary problem (although not from the victims point of view) does permanent damage to the victim, their family and the human social network that is left behind by them. And trust me the passing of Satish has left a lot of damage in its wake.
I only got to know Satish from the latter half of 2015 through email and phone calls. I met him in person for the first time in October 2016 during the Dell EMC World Conference in Austin.

Like all paying tribute to him, I found him to be a genuinely nice guy. He was cool, always smiling, and would leave a conversation with a smile on his face and your own. He introduced me to Pumpkin Lattes! They, he told me were his favorite, and that if anyone arrived to his desk with a Pumpkin Latte he’d move mountains for them. I actually tried them, and hated them. When I told him I tried them, he smiled expecting me to endorse the beverage. He had such a great smile I could not say I didn’t like them. And from then on when Pumpkin Lattes are available in a coffee house, guess what I order? Yup, Pumpkin Lattes He was so good at Marketing

He was also as Vuong Pham called him “one of the “good guys” “.

We were thrown together due to the Dell EMC Merger. But I can honestly say it was an honour and a privilege to have worked with him. He was so well connected with Dell folks and had real personal connections too, beyond the professional. He was a wise soul too, very measured in strategic thinking and would not hold back putting holes in my anxious plans, which always made sense and resulted in them being a hell of a lot better. And Satish always knew how to solve a problem or tackle a project with people’s names. He not only knew a lot of people at Dell, he knew their strengths and who’s expertise would fit into the project or solution. He never had a bad word to say about anyone, ever. And he was a fun person to hang with. And he knew where all the good food was to be found. He loved Austin, and effused about it so much, even within 30 minutes of me first meeting him. In person or on the phone, it was always good to talk to Satish.

And moreover when it came to community, and online community engagement Satish was a kindred spirit. He really lived and breathed community. He was an excellent strategist for Community building. He really was a God send for me as a colleague during the madness and uncertainty of the Dell EMC merger and was a key person in bringing the EMC Elect and the Dell Tech Center Rockstars together to form the new Dell EMC Elect program.

He was ever the professional and smiling gent . And sadly he was very good at appearing confident and competent and genuinely awesome. I say sadly because underneath that was a man in a world of hurt and pain in the end, but even those closest to him did not know how much he was suffering until too late. That is the scourge of suicide.

I have lost 3 friends to suicide now. And all of them were amazing people who I never would have suspected would keep such pain within them hidden and feel that they only had one awful recourse. And we can never fix their problems. Ever. That’s the worst part. Because the grief, anger and guilt tied up in dealing with a death by suicide is tumultuous and hard to navigate.
While I only knew Satish for a short time, learning of his passing has been a very painful gut punch. Especially due to the fact I live in Ireland, too many miles away from Austin to properly pay my respects. I wish I could have done more for him, I really do. An awful lot of people close to him do too. A lot of people around the world feel the same way. If only he’d known how many people loved him and would have happily been a support to him in a trying time.
All we are left with now are memories and regrets.

But we have to hold onto the memories and let Satish go and be at peace. He will be missed by so many people, in Austin, Boston, the Seychelles and all over the World. He was part of a global community who valued him highly. The Dell EMC Elect, are devastated by the news of his passing.
He will be missed. But our memories of the charming gentleman and good humoured community champion will ever remain with us.

The family of Satish have setup a memorial fund for him through the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. (AFSP). If you wish to contribute to this not for profit organization memorial, it would be appreciated.

As a sign off I’d like to dedicate this song, the Parting Glass, by the UCD Choral Scholars, to Satish. Its a very old Scottish song that the Irish people became care takers of a long time ago. It used to be the new Years eve song until “Auld Lang’s syne” became the more popular one. I think this song evokes the loss felt by his friends, and its my way of letting Satish go, but holding on to the precious memories of him.

I offer my deepest condolences, from myself and my family, to the family of Satish and his nearest and dearest.

Rest in peace Satish.

If you are affected by the content of this post, or want to find out more or get help relating to suicide prevention please access this content:

It has been a long, long time since I blogged. But certainly not a long time since I’ve written.

For the past two years, I have been dealing with the Dell EMC Merger as I went through an MSc in Data Business, with a 16,000 word thesis to produce, All this while working full time and being a husband and a Dad. Needless to say, I like any human being had to prioritise and some things did suffer. My wife and kids hardly saw me. I struggled with work, and keeping on target.

All of my spare time was consumed in Research. There were very challenging conversations, around my research, my work and my personal life. Yeah this Masters was not easy by any stretch. And it was made harder by the largest Tech merger in history. But yet I succeeded, I used Human centred design research with Agile Methodology to design and build an artefact. And its one of huge practical importance, delivers serious revenue, business growth and shows evidence that Influence Marketing is not about the Rock Stars of the Enterprise sector of IT. It’s about the people from the ground up. And its demonstrable that micro influencers carry far more ROI than the presumed superstars in the Industry.

I am now writing this post (actually was now, I was writing this on the 23rd June) ; on a flight to Portugal with my wife and kids for some much needed R&R. And the first thing I do when I relax is blog. Well I love blogging. I have missed it so much.

I am not a very good blogger, but I love sharing my thoughts and getting feedback. I like to share when I can. And the reason I’m blogging now is I have time to think, and I wanted to put my thoughts down. I also am deliberately being a data provocateur, to stimulate the conversation around Influence marketing and influence engagement.

My Masters, is an MSC in Data business, out of the Irish Management Institute and University College Cork.

I took it up because, I wanted to develop myself and keep myself relevant in a very volatile and uncertain industry. I also wanted to learn how to better define the problem I was trying to address with the program I run, that being the Dell EMC Elect. What I found surprising, was that even though I walked away with a human centred artefact that addressed the original problem I was trying to solve, its actually not that relevant or important. In fact it’s the least significant thing about what I learned.

While data is important (hell it’s the new oil, its practically money), its not the silver bullet. It is a silver bullet. This Masters made me take a step back, and really look at the nature of influencers, Influencer Marketing, Champions, Rock Stars, Unicorns, the whole unwieldy gamut. And when I did I could not believe I was so stupid. The key to it all is of course the people. And the few erudite readers, who are reading this post, were waiting for me to state this obvious thing. And I am going to state it again, its about the people. It really is. And you are probably nodding in agreement.

I am going to challenge your nods though, and beyond the sound byte what does that mean? What is it about the people? Why are they so important? Are they only important because the sound byte says so! Beyond people being customers, having revenue, spending, buying, talking about your product or service or not, what are people? Who are these people? Why do we say they are important? Is it to make them feel good enough to part with their money, their voice, and their time? To me the industry, does not do much to show any more awareness beyond this.

And anyone is free to disagree with me, but I would stand my ground and say the Enterprise Industry, and by and large the IT Industry, does not demonstrate they go any deeper into people apart from calling them the most important asset and then trying to wrangle, revenue, time, knowledge, business growth, opportunity etc etc out of them. And I’m not saying the Industry does not value people, it does. The fact is without people there is no Industry. That said I’ll still say to you dear reader, and much of the people in the Industry don’t fully understand people, and how they are hurting their business and their customers, partners etc. by not fully appreciating who people really are or having a human centred approach to their business.

And I will also take the position that not acknowledging this as the status quo bias du jour, is defending it. “Debunking the notions” hurts you and your business more than opening up to the idea of it. If you can read people so well then how the hell did you not see Donald Trump winning an election? You can blame the Russians all you want, but he won the election. And how did Brexit happen? Stupid people making stupid decisions?

If you think that, if you subscribe to ideas that nefarious n’er do wells, manipulated things, you are stuck in a status quo bias.

I’m neither for nor against Trump or Brexit, I have no direct stake in those situations. I have my own problems with a dead duck government that would rather pander to the whims of Brussels bureaucrats than engage the UK or US directly themselves at a time when it is ever more urgent to keep communication channels open and flowing. Again, status quo group think dead end bias right here in Ireland. But I don’t hold theories that my government is full of incompetent people. They are acting incompetently, but that’s because they do don’t see the importance of people, even as they represent them. If I’m yanking your chain, let make it worse and say that I won a wager betting Donald trump would win. I never expected it to happen, but I saw something that few others did not. I knew Brexit would happen, and I was more surprised that no one else could see what I was seeing. I’m no seer or clairvoyant, I just observed what was happening and I focused on the people. The Democrats on the US and the remainers in Britain committed the same sin. They assumed their perspective was the correct one, and furthermore labelled those who disagreed or had a different perspective as “deplorables”. This ensured a mental barrier a staus quo bias, and also denied any constructive dialogue to verify that bias and check assumptions. And if you are going to call those who disagree with you “deplorable”, you have not possibility of dialogue, discourse, understanding or even the possibility of changing minds.

So, what is my assertion? Well put simply, people are complicated. (I can hear the sighs already )

But they really are, and they build complicated networks around themselves. Individuals/ single human beings / persons in networks have fascinating complicated, innovative and downright miraculous effect on other people, places and things. Human beings really are more than they appear to be.

Social Networks are tremendous and fundamentally related to goodness. And if you use a human centred approach to designing your solution you can achieve great things and solve problems through community wisdom.

And for clarification, following an edit of this blog post, I will reiterate I am from the ground up viewer of things. Celebrity and from the top down are antithetical to me. Unless you are talking from a military or paramilitary context. I’m not ignorant nor inexperienced with the chain of command and its requirements in military pr paramilitary organisations. It is the chain of worship I balk at. Celebrity worship, politician worship, or pundit worship. And I may talk about that in another blog post in due course.

I will end, that Peter Drucker’s statement, that “culture eats strategy fro breakfast” is a warning to all who are involved in design and design thinking. It is a deep warning, especially for those who think they have the pulse of cultural thinking and conditions.

I offer this final warning as an addition to that.

Don’t assume your cultural interpretation is the actual one that exists when you’re creating or designing. Engage the people you want to help and assess the actual cultural situation as part of your research into your problem or project. Seek out and listen to those who disagree with you. Listen to them, converse. You may not win them over but I’ll bet dollars to donuts their feedback is what really improves your design. If you fail to do that, and many do, your failure will be later and greater and guaranteed if you don’t pay attention to the actual cultural situation.

As a designer or creator, be focused, be resolute but be realistic, most of all with yourself. And remember, people are people. After all, as we used to quip sarcastically in Digital’s technical support group in Dublin “this job would be grand if it wasn’t for the customers”!

]]>https://baysidechronicle.com/2017/08/15/culture-eats-strategy-for-breakfast/feed/0mabroirlPeter DruckerAnnouncing the Dell EMC Elect of 2017https://baysidechronicle.com/2017/03/29/announcing-the-dell-emc-elect-of-2017/
https://baysidechronicle.com/2017/03/29/announcing-the-dell-emc-elect-of-2017/#commentsWed, 29 Mar 2017 13:00:26 +0000http://baysidechronicle.com/?p=886A very short but important post. It has been hard but we’ve finally built the Dell EMC Elect Community. The Founders worked very hard to make this happen. As did I and many others.

From my perspective as the trustee, this was indeed a challenging time, effectively putting together a new influencer and advocate engagment program. It’s a larger world we are in, now with Dell EMC. And things are moving fast technologically in a challenging market and an uncertain world.

That is why, we need programs like this. We need communities of trust and skill to sort the signal from the noise in” Tech”. We need to establish these communities into innovative networks. Because technology is a tool of the people, not the other way round. Thats why I firmly believe this List of Dell EMC Elect of 2017, is a community of people, who are engaged in getting their hands dirty and getting things done for their customers and stakeholders . And its never been a more important time to have such a community, that is for the people in technology, nominated by the people in technology. It is a marketing program, but it is so much more than that. It’s a community of very skilled peers in technology, who are curious and most of all authentic. And I am vey happy to be in their midst and see the world as a slightly brighter place having these people recognised for all they do.

Go ahead and check the list out, and give them props for their achievement.

Are you still trying to convince your boss to send you to Dell EMC World in May?

Are you hovering over the decision to head to a convention in the desert that you’re not sure will answer your questions about what you want to know Dell EMC?

Well we have something that might convince you, that includes, exclusive access, exclusive networking opportunities, and direct conversation with your the top person you follow for Dell EMC insights and information.

If you Register before the 14th of April with a specific code, you could meet that person in the flesh, and get to meet them with other key influencers in the Community space at Dell EMC World in Las Vegas in May. Not only that but, you’ll get to accompany them to the keynotes and get exclusive seating. Couple that with having your influencer right in front of you to ask those questions you always wanted to ask in person. And you get to do it while Networking with the top Dell EMC World influencers. Does that convince you?

So how do I do this you ask?

Easy.

Go to the List here and select your influencer and their twitter handle.

Tweet at them saying that you’re registering to meet them there at #DellEMCWorld.

They will reply to you with a specific registration code which you use to register.

You then register with that code before the 14th of April, 2017. (We use this code to track registrations against the influencer you select)

If you and 19 others chose this influencer and register for Dell EMC World by April 14th, we’ll ensure said influencer gets registered and will be there to meet you in person.

So go ahead now, head to the list, tweet them, and get that registration code, get registered before April 14th.

Some of the influencers will be registered already, they will let you know if they are and suggest other influencers who are not.